Neuroscience Forum

First of all, the brain is a large system of connections. The number of connections and the strength of those connections is largely unknown and ever changing. I'm sure you've heard someone say, "I'm not the same person I was when I was 16". Essentially, that is more true than most people think. The changes that have occurred in your neural dynamics and structure since you were sixteen, hell, since yesterday, have changed so much that your brain would not even be recognizable if you had the technology to scan ever connection. Every singe moment of life is invaded with constant input from your environment.Those inputs change the connections in specific areas constantly. Were you to scan your entire brain today, connection by connection (if it were possible), and you recreated ALL of those connections on a computer (however, the connections alone are not everything, you also have to take into consideration the strength or "Weights" of those connections and the neural dynamics that can be specific from neuron to neuron) you would have a conscious computer that is essentially you that picks up from that day. Because your experiences and the computers experiences are exponentially different from that point on, the computer would cease being you within a second of being initiated. It would be like the computer was created as a genetic twin of your brain, once that brain is born, the two of you will become more and more different at an exponential rate. However, were you to be able to scan your brain at the point of death and recreate that, you could have a conscious computer that is essentially you. This would not be satisfying though, as a computer would not have the ability to interact with the environment in the same ways that you could. A philosopher by the name of Alva Noe states that consciousness is not just neural structure, but also the way that those neural structures interact with the environment. You interact in certain ways based off of not only your brain, but your body. Someone who is blind has a very different consciousness than they would have had they not been born blind.

This argument is feudal anyways, you are basically talking about cloning yourself in a mechanical way to recreate your present self. If we clone a sheep and kill the original, we do not say that the original sheep lives on as the clone. They start the same but because no two organisms or conscious beings can experience the same things at the same time, they become independent conscious vessels with independent personalities and attributes. The computer would start out essentially the same, would quickly become its self, losing your attributes over time and gaining its own (just like you have since the day you were born). Essentially, the computer has experienced everything that you have in your life leading up to that point. Your education, your parents (the computer would feel that it was born of your mother), it would remember the second grade. However, after you started it, it would have it's own experiences which makes your "end goal" unrealistic and logistically and philosophically impossible.

Steffen, I would like to address your comment on the "soul". I don't believe it's as elusive as you suggest. We are biological beings made up of molecules and atoms. The brain is neural connections. If you completely recreated a brain with a computer model, that computer would have the feeling of a "soul". Somewhere, that is neurologically programmed.


I hope this has answered some questions Vernes. Of course, my disclaimer is that these are simply my theories on conscious computers. These are not laws or known facts. If you have any questions please as and maybe, if you would like, I could back up my arguments with more technical answers.